


Paleontology; To Dig From Our Skin.

by his tongue and liver (doubleinfinity)



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Afghanistan, Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Extremely Dubious Consent, Guns, Headcanon, LUST IS SO RUINED HERE, Love, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Sad, Schizophrenia, Somehow I got this strange notion for writing war fics with Chris AND Eddie so lets just roll, Violence, War, chris is a captain, i guess you can call it that, passionate love, ruined lust literally, yeah so hey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 21:45:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14756876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubleinfinity/pseuds/his%20tongue%20and%20liver
Summary: War AU.  An exploration of Chris and Eddie in Afghanistan, uncovering details about each other as they shovel more fucking sand over their heads.And the moment when all the doors are blown off their persons.(grisly sexual content warning)





	Paleontology; To Dig From Our Skin.

_let go of me  
oƃ ǝɯ ʇǝl _

An identifiably Pashto conversation scatters through their base, uprooted like the sandy grit that’s been rattled off the ground by the breeze, smooth as sandpaper. Neither is atypical.

Regarding the former, people from the surrounding towns wander through their camp all the time, dully regarding the sharp-greens and muted-browns of the American soldiers, as though Chris and his peers are animals that drifted back to the Middle East on free-floating shards of a Pangeal bridge. There’s a cute picture of Chris somewhere, getting a brown kid to thumbs-up the camera as he passes a bag of saran-wrapped drugstore candy to him. He mailed it back to a girlfriend that said she’d wait for him, though she won’t.

He isn’t worried about them, but Chris still scrapes his eyes hypervigilantly along the ground, approximating where the voices came from.

As for the latter, well. It’s arid again today- the kind of sweltering that overcooks his senses, where the breeze only serves to move the heat around. His skin prickles with sweat underneath the tarp of his uniform, buffing up his endurance level.

Turning back to camp, Chris’ sight snakes through the paths that cut through rows of tents and buildings constructed from the grit of materials. There’s a group of men returning from a conditioning drill, holding themselves tenaciously vertical despite their exhaustion from the heat and the intensive training.

Eddie is among them, wearing his own individualized purpose. Chris doesn’t have to try to pick him out; he is obvious, in his way, a slickened knife among these gibbous bayonets. Black-haired, slender, he stops to sit down on a rock and the other men continue passing him by. He drops his head back, trickling coffee from the cap of a steaming thermos down his throat.

Sweat lines the curves of Eddie’s face. His chest, bare with his shirt slung across his shoulders, is contoured by wells of perspiration. Gone is the flush of a wilderness-inflicted sickness, leaving his skin paved over with ivory instead of dripping, fevered jaundice.

Thoughtfully, Chris heads in his direction, the raw of imprint of the afternoon sun melting on him as he goes. He trains and he gets bigger; Eddie becomes slimmer, leaner. Even when he notices Chris approaching and shoots him a harsh, lazy grin, his teeth waste no space in his mouth. He is a man with no excess, and it has taken Chris a long time to find comfort in that. Their first months sharing a tent, when they were both just soldiers dropped into the thick-forest areas of Afghanistan, Chris got so few words and expressions out of him that he didn’t think Eddie would save him if it came down to it. But when it _did_ come down to it, it was Chris carrying him out. And the wrath of Eddie thereafter was the gateway to this slew of gentle affects.

“You comin’ out today?” he confirms with the other.

Any other soldier would have risen from their seat and met him at his height. Instead, Eddie opts to flick his eyes up at him from below, his gaze swirling with a heat-delirium that goldens his eyeshine.

And at this point, if it were anyone else, Chris would’ve given him a warning salute, and the man would have leapt hastily, apologetically, to his feet. But the gesture Chris produces is frisky and lazy, and Eddie returns with a playfully taunting two-finger tap to his forehead.

The younger rubs his shirt across his chest like a towel, then rolls it out and pulls it back over his head. “Captain Walker,” he addresses, capping the thermos and hoisting himself up. “I will accompany you on a high-risk pickup of MREs, and will shoot a hundred goats if that’s what it takes to keep us protected.” He arches back on his heels, a mocking smile at his lips. In Chris’s presence, the solder’s need for short words and closed expressions dissolves.

Chris knows he should break him, deconstruct this attitude, but he’s already seen him broken and prefers this.

Maybe he’s soft. Softer than he would be with an audience present, at least. Even just between the two of them right now, they’re playing roles. Not who they are when they’re alone together. Not who they’d be if they weren’t here at all.

“Good to hear,” he responds honestly, straightening his back in a goodbye gesture and moving on. It’s nice to have something to actually do; Chris is among them in their boredom. There are games they can play, substances they can roll and smoke, but the teeth-grinding lack of action permeates into every day on the base. It’s only broken (and indeed, _well_ -broken) by overcompensating spats of icy terror that can squelch out the sun in an instant.

The bulk of Chris’ position is spent shuttling his superior’s orders down to the company he’s in charge of, but even the explicit instructions get hazy. Especially when they’re all just rolling around on the desert floor, rotting from the monotony. _Especially_ when they’re suspended in split-instant decision making nightmares, having to barrel into a family of farmers paid to come at them with assault rifles. Or when there’s shouting in the distance and they have to decide if the arguing villagers are worth being shot before they make the mistake of hesitating and find out they’re armed.

Perhaps more than anything, however, his job is to straighten out his men as soon as they realize that their enemies do not wear titles on their t-shirts. They kill men with guns, but they also kill unarmed citizens who _look_ threatening. It’s not organized into sides. And maybe that takes so long to settle that the extended, vacant hours they deal with most days are not as empty as he thinks.

He’s past it.

Hit a wall with the horror and has been pressed to it for more than a year, unable to advance beyond it or let go of it. The byproduct of comfortability and leadership.

Chris fills his time like he fills his belly: with necessities and shortcuts. He strides into the mess, laughs briefly at group of men sharing an anecdote about deflating tires with bullets, then gets right back up to prepare the vehicle for their own gentle rejection of the ambling day.

-

Wheels grind the sand into smoke, four men lean over to take position and point their M110’s at the road, and a small hundred pounds of ready-to-eat meals are loaded into the combat vehicle.

Chris usually don’t waste his time on these low-status tasks, but he’s glad he did when he strikes up an amiable discussion with the base’s loading man and learns there are rumors about a band of targets over the western hills. This is good news: that’s far enough away to get eyes on the situation without it leading too closely back to their camp. He takes the time to call over to his commander and receive some orders before heading back to the truck.

As he’s walking to the vehicle, a dark shape slips fluidly by his side, grabbing him by the arm. He’s yanked around the side of the garage, into the privacy of the loading dock.

“Hey,” Eddie whispers as Chris’ shoulders arch and he parries, hand going to his gun. Eddie’s attention, dark around the eyelids, flickers from the firearm to his own, slung over his shoulder. “What the fuck is going on, Walker, just the two of us are going back to base now?”

“Don’t sneak up on me,” Chris barks back in a low tone, curving his lips in annoyance. He feels rattled enough to wish he had fired a shot at Gluskin, if only to appease the embarrassment he feels thinking someone might have seen. Two juvenile kids flitting carelessly across a playground. It feels sinful, to see Eddie playing around in this place, while the rest of them stretch gravely through the hours. Unceremonious and disrespectful.

Eddie looks shocked for a brief moment, then hardens his features. He shifts his rifle’s weight on the crook of his shoulder. “Why? I clearly need not be wary of your reflexes, darling,” he mocks airily.

He’s lucky that Chris hesitated. Lucky that Chris knows him by the touch of his hand and doesn’t even have to think- Eddie’s body is as familiar as his own. When you’re isolated, and carrying the weight of somebody for weeks, they get into you. Their voice and skin.

This doesn’t sway him. He warns the younger in a hushed voice, “I will deconstruct you, Eddie. You keep behaving like this, and I’ll fuck you to pieces.” His eyes dash challengingly from eye to eye, over the shapely bridge of Eddie’s nose. His gaze cements as the words settle.

And for some reason, Eddie flashes with a tenderer emotion. And then he grounds. “Well, you know. It’s different,” he says, eyes filling with the lingering images of tree leaves and heavy artillery raining overhead. “It’s so fucking quiet here. There are too many rules.”

“It’s different,” Chris echoes, “Sure as fuck right.” Eddie isn’t impervious to being disciplined, he knows. Just knows that when Eddie looks at him, he sees somebody from six months ago. 

“I have to be something else now,” he reminds him. “We’re not on the floor of some forest anymore; I have a job I need to do and I’m always being watched. It’s not a god damn free-for-all anymore.”

Eddie wants to touch him, maybe test out another reflex and check if it’s dulled too. But he doesn’t. He cocks his head gently and allows his heart to thrum nervously along the casing of his bones. Allows himself to see Chris as somebody he has to obey.

He guides himself to put up a wall, shaped like a silver star medal and a new title (one which Chris got for saving _him_ ), and encloses the body of Chris entirely inside of it. He straightens up his back, forces his face to close. “I got it, Walker,” he accedes. There is no resentment in his voice.

Somewhere, tapping against the armor of his heavy uniform, Chris notices himself flutter with panic at Eddie’s changed expression. They turn back into the soldiers that they were when they first met, unsure if they trusted each other. He can all-but _hear_ their history crunch under his feet when he steps forward. But he is immediately soothed by the greasy, wet balm of utter emotionlessness that follows, and like always, he lets it sweep him away.

“The-” he starts as he walks with Eddie back to the truck, where one of his other men is waiting dutifully. He opens the door for Chris. “The other men are going out to confirm a sighting. Just the three of us are going back to base.” He turns from the other man to Eddie, his eyes softer than he wants them to be. “You going up?” he asks.

Eddie ducks his head and climbs into the truck, snaking through the interior and emerging through the overhead hatch. He leans the width of his breast against the edge of the roof, then pulls the gun off his shoulder and points it at the road, lowering his eye to the scope. “Yep,” he answers compliantly.

-

Chris leans against the wall of the rumbling vehicle, hands clutching firmly at his knees. His attention shifts from the driver, to the grated windows, to the closed metal flap that Gluskin is hiding behind. It feels unsettling to be virtually alone in this larger vehicle, sans the driver and the stacks of sealed cardboard containers. It’s hollow and quiet, but still the drive continues smoothly.

Until they’re just coming up on the base and the driver jerks to a lashing stop.

“Oh fuck, Walker,” he calls out, voice rising as he speaks. The man grabs at the armored window in front of the steering wheel, but the material doesn’t lift away. He turns back to Chris frantically, leaning to let his superior see through the thin slit. Chris gets on his feet and peers through it hastily, scanning for what the man saw outside. He swallows a sharp breath of air and then punches at the hatch on the ceiling above him.

Looking up, he sees that Eddie is already on his feet, gripping the gun with both hands as he aims it out at the desert. The male jumps when the metal grate hits the roof of the truck, firing a pair of wild eyes down at Chris. His face demands an instruction, and it gets worse every second that passes without one.

“Eddie,” Chris begs, trying to steady the male, his voice catching. “Eddie, please.”

Trembling, Eddie’s expression tears helplessly through him. The younger shakes his head in a daze, loosens his grasp on the weapon. Then turns back to the child walking alone in the sand, a small boy with an iron appendage supported by both hands. He’s outside of the territory of their base, but he holds the grenade launcher in its direction, fumbling with the heaviness of the firearm.

“Eddie,” Chris repeats urgently. He does not want to give this command.

And he can’t. Instead, Chris uses all of his body weight to heave himself out through the opening, grabbing for the rifle.

Everything flashes. Eddie wrenches the gun back, yanking it out of Chris’ mollifying grasp. He bends over, brain screaming, to fire one impulsive, precise shot into the brain of the child.

The extended franticness of the moment keeps the details from settling, (and he can’t risk it settling), so Eddie pushes forcefully against the creeping stillness that follows. He hooks his hands onto the side of the truck and jumps onto the ground, holding himself in a protectively offensive stance. He does a hysterical scan of the surroundings, whipping back and forth to locate a following threat. When there is none, he takes off sprinting through the sandy dirt.

Chris grabs Eddie’s rifle by the neck and swears as he hurdles down after him, a shock jolting up his legs when he hits the earth.

“Follow us!” he shouts heatedly at the third soldier, who scrambles back into the thrumming truck he had just climbed out of. The engine revs in the background as Chris races after his solider.

“Stop, Gluskin!”

The formal order whips through the air, lashing at Eddie’s ears, but he does not stop.

Small, copper lights from their camp wink in his eyes as he races past them, localized beacons against the rapidly darkening outskirts. If it were brighter, he’d be able to see the nearest residential farm in the distance, maybe even the village beyond it. Incidentally, he sees nothing except this pinging mark to which he must arrive before the desert shatters around him.

He feels Chris at his heels, becoming suddenly grateful for his training. His legs pull him out of grabbing distance, his focus unwaveringly centered on the tiny corpse.

He wheezes when he reaches it, bending over to forcefully catch his breath. It _is_ a small boy. Dark, ruffled hair, face brushed with freckles as though imbued with permanent shards of sand. He has fallen in a heap, the firearm tucked on the underside of his thin body. Eddie leans down to touch him, to run his fingers gently across his arm and pull the grenade launcher out from beneath his torso. But when his fingers touch the boy’s skin, shifting the limb out of the way, he prickles and freezes.

“Eddie,” the voice directly behind him warns, cold and commanding. “At attention.”

He is being ordered to yield: to reel everything back in, go blank, and submit. He can’t. Instead, he hoists the weapon into his arms and stands up, turning with enraged shock on his face. Hefting it in Chris’ direction, Eddie’s eyes flare wildly. He exposes the underbelly of the gun to display the open barrel to his superior.

“This. Is. Unloaded,” he states threateningly, his eyes circling with fire. The shock transforms to anger, and he aggressively throws the grenade launcher back to the ground. His eyes well up, teeth grinding tightly. He fights to keep the anger alive before he can realize it’s burned him hollow.

The military vehicle meets them suddenly, cranking to a stop behind them. Dust rises like smoke all around, stinging their eyes. It’s then that Eddie opens his mouth to cry out, but Chris grabs him first, a tender squeeze to the back of his neck, and pulls him firmly against the truck where he has a surface to lean on.

“Wait,” he instructs, eyes trailing over the broken body, the empty weapon, blood seeping into the congealing mounds of sand. “Gluskin, it’s okay, just wait.”

He turns back to find the third solider hitting the ground, having emerged from the car. He’s chewing his lip regretfully, albeit unemotionally, as he studies the dead boy.

“Thomson,” he informs. “You’re gonna stay here and take care of this,” Commandingly, Chris thrusts Eddie’s gun into the man’s arms. “Figure out who the hell he is and get his body buried before he’s picked apart. Bring the weapon back to General Morton. I have to get this reported now.”

The man listens carefully and nods, this new level of responsibility overwhelming despite how deeply he desires it. “Yes, Walker,” he returns with brave apprehension.

With that, Chris turns back to Eddie and swiftly corrals him into the truck before Thomson can see him in this state, packing him among the stacks of food. He steps inside, closes the door, and falls into the driver’s seat. He’s already speeding the vehicle back to the base before he knows what he’s going to do.

“Eddie,” he tries carefully, turning his head to look at the younger who’s leaning weakly against the boxes. He struggles to prolong the inevitable by keeping the other’s mind engaged. “This isn’t uncommon. It happens. They do it because no one wants to shoot a _kid_ , but you had to, and if you didn’t then _I_ would have.” He swallows, catching eyes with the other when he braves another glance into the back. “And if neither of us did, there might’ve been a lot more dead men on our hands.”

Eddie slouches, resting into one of the lower stacks. He buries his head between his knees, clawing at his face with both hands. “But what the fuck happened?” he demands, scratching the tips of his fingers roughly against his eyes and forehead. “What the fuck?”

“I don’t know,” Chris answers honestly, routing the long way around the perimeter of the camp. “Maybe someone was paid to launch an attack, so they sent the kid out there, but they didn’t know what they were doing. A child from one of the community homes, cause he wouldn’t be missed? Or maybe the kid got that thing on his own and didn’t know what it was. I have no idea, but I _know,_ if you had hesitated, and he was about to strike, things would be much worse right now.”

These comforts don’t permeate. Eddie is deconstructing with every passing second, his throat splitting with scream as he bites his palm to keep them from building aloud. “Fuck,” he babbles to himself, breathing erratically. “Fuck, what am I going to do?”

Chris brings the truck to a stop behind two of the sleeping quarters, B9 and B10. There’s a smattering of trees that form a just-barely-classified alpine range leading into the darkness, and it’s there that Chris shuts off the engine and heads into the back of the car.

Gently, he places both of his hands on Eddie’s shoulders, staring at him until the man draws his head up. Eddie’s chest is heaving, his body shaking viciously. He looks like he’s on the verge of snapping, held together by twine that he’s about to let himself rip through. His eyes beg Chris to tear his body apart before that happens.

“Eddie,” Chris speaks hurriedly, trying to pierce through the feral grief the takes over the male’s world. The name rumbles off his tongue, a familiar flavor, especially now, after repeating it so much in the past hour. But not stale. Still fresh, and alive, and weeping salt. “You have to hold it back for me. Just for a little longer.” He follows along with the other’s eyes, nodding slightly to get Eddie to match the gesture. “Please,” he adds, “Just a little longer. Keep it in.”

Eddie squeezes his eyes down and the action forces two streams of tears down his cheeks. He nods with laborious assent, features constricted and teeth clenched.

“Okay,” Chris breathes, relief washing across him. “I’ll be right back. Don’t leave here.”

From there, he rushes out of the car and closes the door behind him, hastily jogging between two of the cot-filled tents until he’s back inside the flux of the base.

It’s the low-lit regularity of post-dinner, when the men are satisfied and mostly excited to get another chance at sleep. He goes low, shoulders drawn in. The hum of another disorganized night meets him every step of the way. Moon-shatter drips down his back, streaking him in colors unfamiliar to this territory. It’s what happens when you feel in this place: you turn translucent, and everyone can see. So you either _don’t_ feel or you hide yourself in your camouflage.

In some way, the surroundings comfort him. This familiar churn of people is a transitionary tepid bath for the icewater he’s about to be dipped back into. His uniform is finally starting to warm him up instead of aggravating him for the first time all day.

Chris doesn’t bother to check if the other men are paying him any respect as he passes, or if they continue on as unaffected as he is. Eventually, he trades the droning chatter for cedar steps which lead to a door as soft as tarp, knocking thrice on the sound-absorbent material before simply letting himself inside. His boss, one ranking above him, looks up from his desk with a mixture of concern and irritation at the boundary Chris just crossed.

“Walker?” General Morton demands, too incredulous that this intrusion is happening to be angry. He leans back in the brown folding chair, a makeshift attachment to his tented, shoddy office. “Was there an issue with the retrieval?”

“Gluskin killed a kid on the way back.” He tries to form the sentence slowly, but the words sort of roll into and over one another. He swallows, fixing his posture. “Morton,” he addresses, backtracking over his discourtesy. “There was a boy was carrying an M203.” He hesitates again, longer this time. “Looked like a strike on the base, but it turned out to be unloaded. Thomson is bringing the weapon back as we speak.”

His superior leans forward, eyes circling his charge threateningly. “You should have brought the body back with you,” he criticizes. “We gotta bring him into the village tomorrow, find out who he is. Then we’ll know if we can rule this out as a threat.”

Chris nods, absorbing the blame. He turns to leave.

“Now where are you going?” his superior demands, rightfully red-faced as he is. “You need to take control over your men.”

“I am,” he growls, then pales at the accidental slip of aggression.

“Gluskin’s pissed,” he covers, gentler this time. He then hastens out of the office, not waiting to find out if there’s an order following him. If there is, he defies it.

-

The door makes a grating sound as Chris yanks it back, splashing moonlight into the blackened van. Human eyes don’t shine through the dark with tapetum lucidum, but Eddie’s do something worse, his photoreceptors dragging all the light into them and creating a vacuum. He looks up at Chris and the older thinks he’s going to be pulled into it too, no matter what he tries to defend himself with. This is what happens when Eddie keeps it in for too long.

Chris moves, easing the younger off the crates. “Careful,” he says when the other grabs onto him for support, afraid that Eddie will dig a set of nails into his forearm and then it’ll all be over. “What are you feeling?”

With guidance, Eddie treads across the harsh metal of the truck’s flooring. Chris steps down onto the soft and flaking dirt below. The wilderness hits, crisp air and singing frogs streaming from the forest before them. He looks up at Eddie, standing in the doorway to the truck, his back met by shadows. His eyes are narrowed, and Chris can’t rule them out as “not hostile” as they dart up and down his front. This is just how he looked before he went crazy.

Chris’ stance shifts into offense. He readies his shoulders to catch Gluskin’s weight. “Tell me now,” he demands.

Eddie launches off ledge and Chris _does_ end up catching him. Because when the male steps harshly into him, he lets himself go, crying. His fury dies out and so too does Chris’ fear of it.

“I feel horrible,” he answers, pulling himself small against the older. His body shakes, eyes rolling dangerous loose. “I can’t think about- it doesn’t fucking matter what it could have been, ‘cause it wasn’t.”

Eddie feels the dread of what he’s done sit in his bones. It waits for an unrelated thought to cross and then injects even the safest memories with its darkness. If he waits any longer, there will be nowhere safe left in his head. He hangs heavy from it. What he’s done fills him entirely.

More than anything, he knows he has to get out of his mind before it takes over everything left. A helpless whine builds at the bottom of his throat, breaking into a desperate howl. He will kill everyone in this fucking town if that will keep stop the contamination from spreading.

The sound of laughter breaks out behind them, swept over from the nearby tents. Chris’ head cracks towards it sharply; he pulls Eddie against his chest, as though to protect him from it. “I think we should leave for right now,” he urges quietly, hushing into Eddie’s ear. “I want to take you somewhere away from here.”

The sound of Chris’ voice distracts him from the feeling for a moment. Drains him of it, but as soon as the older’s mouth shuts, he fills right back to the brim again.

Chris is terrified. He doesn’t want anybody to see Eddie this way, and he is afraid at what the male might do if provoked. After being isolated in the middle of combat together, he will never unknow what Eddie can do when he’s lost to his rage. If anyone _else_ knew, he would have never been given this position. And maybe after tonight, he’ll lose it.

It doesn’t matter. He needs to bring Eddie somewhere he’ll be safe.

“There’s a tent that I set up in the woods, to ah… when I need to get away from the noise,” Chris tells him, taking Eddie by the shoulders and holding him at arm’s length. The pressure feels like light to Eddie’s flesh. “It’s a bit of a walk through the dark but it was still there ten nights ago. Can you make it, Gluskin?”

Eddie raises his eyes, savoring the burn of Chris’ tongue lashing over his surname. He nods, his mouth dry and his heart inside of it.

Their boots trotting over dirt and Eddie’s shallow breathing are the only sounds that last once they’re a few minutes inside the woods. The tightly-clinging trees isolate them from the landscape, choking out all of its defining features until it hardly seems like Afghanistan anymore. Eddie grips his head in his hands, howling into his elbows.

“It keeps circling back,” he chants hurriedly, franticness resurfacing. “I keep remembering it and I can’t get it out. I can’t fucking get it out it won’t get out it won’t get out. I keep forgetting and then it comes back.” His words fall and settle with the rocks built into the dirt path. “Please make it stop,” he begs Chris. “Please get him out.”

“Who is he?” Chris supplicates back, his resolve tearing. “What do you need?”

“I need it to stop! I need to think. I can’t fucking think. I- I see him there. He’s watching. He won’t take over but I need him to, I need him to take me this time.”

Chris remembers Eddie, sick with fever and slashed through the shoulder with a bullet hole that’d just been treated with cotton pads and surgical tape from his comrade’s pocket, getting up from the forestbed with absolute murder on his face.

When Eddie was shot through the trees, it hardly seemed to hurt him. He went down yelping, but as soon as he hit the dirt, he shut up. He bit into his untouched arm to keep quiet: put his pride beneath him so that Chris could pick him up and the five of them could barrel to safety. All through that first night, delirious with infection, Chris was terrified that Eddie was going to die. It was the first time he gave any thought to the conversations they’d had at night in their tent; the first instance where he noticed his chest ping at the idea of Eddie’s closeness. He held him through the night and refused to move for fear that it would strain the other irreparably.

And when the other three threatened to leave them there, and gave his desperate display of outward affection an unsavory name, Eddie dragged himself to his feet and got rid of them all. They didn’t get a chance to reach for their guns before they lost their eyes.

Eddie had said, in the moment afterwards, stumbling back down to join a stunned Chris, that he would not remember any of it. Because he was not himself when he did it. So Chris had kept that secret even from him.

Now Chris looks at Gluskin through the darkness of the forest, and he knows Eddie is the only one with him. He puts a hand to his collar. “You’re violent, Eddie,” he speaks honestly, earning a glance from the younger. “But not while you’re in your own head.” Which is why being completely aware and killing something innocent was too much for him.

Chris unbuttons his jacket and pulls it off, throwing it to the ground. “Fight me,” he orders.

Eddie looks up, eyelashes laced with incredulousness. “ _Fight_ you?” he scoffs, curious.

Popping the joints in his knuckles, Chris cocks his head and performs a shallow semi-circle around the younger, appraising his body from various degrees. “Mmm,” he affirms. His shoulders lock back, fisting coming up to his ribcage. “Show me what they teach you.” He gazes over Eddie from the size. “And get rid of your knife.”

Unspeaking, Eddie reaches around to his back pocket and pulls the pocket knife out of it. He opens his palm and it drops to the ground.

“But why?” he asks, annoyance peeking through the wetness in his voice. Still, he arches his back anyways. The training? The training gets blown out of the fucking door. It’s his instincts that are out now.

“Because you’re angry at me,” Chris tells him, bracing his arms against the suspense.

From the other side of the ring, Eddie’s assured stance wavers. He straightens himself, perplexity washing over his face. “I’m… not angry at you?” His hand skims through his severe, razor-shorn hair, black as the gaps between the trees.

“Yes you are,” Chris feeds him. “You’re angry that I made you murder that boy.” His eyes are hard and challenging, as though he dares Eddie to disagree with him. And maybe this is what he meant by a fight, Eddie thinks, and if that’s the case, then yeah, he can fucking fight.

“Bullshit,” he snarls back, fisting his hands premeditatively. “You can’t transfer the responsibility like that. That’s not how it happened.”

“Who is _he_?” Chris shoots back, stepping around Eddie until he’s completed the circle. Eddie pivots incrementally to keep their fronts aligned every step of the way.

Flush runs down Eddie’s face at the probe. “Let’s not get into this, darling,” he warns. “You won’t want to know when you know.”

Eddie has worked so hard to overcome his father.

Today he’s finally failed. He destroyed a child, nearly in the way his father did to him, without even being told to by the man’s voice. He can’t be asked to live with that. Chris can’t ask him to.

Eddie lashes out, diving at Chris’ left side and then thrusting himself in the opposite direction, striking the older with a fist to his right shoulder. He feels Chris’ hands grab him by his arms and then inflict the jab of a knee to his abdomen, too gentle to actually injure him. The pitying gesture floods him with anger; he throws his body forward and tears one arm free, scratching wildly at Chris’ chest.

His superior grabs him by his wrists and forces him around, twisting his arm in the process. He hisses as it strains unnaturally, flung over his shoulder. “Break it,” he barks at Chris, trying to tear himself away. “Do whatever you have to.”

Chris’ strongarm softens. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Please,” Eddie cries viciously. “Help me.”

Eddie feels himself get pulled against Chris’ chest. “Don’t let him in,” he urges the younger, pulling him tighter for emphasis. “Whoever it is that makes you turn off and go insane. Don’t let him take you. Let _me_ take you. Gluskin? Okay?”

It takes a moment to register, but Chris finally understands the frantic movement of Eddie’s body to be what it is: a nod, agreeing.

Eddie tears free from the clutch, yanking around and throwing another punch straight for Chris’ face.

The older catches it against his arm, knocking the limb out of the air. He ends up, again, with both Eddie’s arms restrained. But this time it looks like Eddie just wanted to know that he could trust Chris with holding him back. He relaxes his body, allowing himself to submit.

The path through the woods eventually breaks off, stamped into the Earth by fallen leaves and overgrown grass. At this point, Chris nods to the right, leading them through a cage of loose branches.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Eddie mumbles quietly. “Everything is different.”

Chris holds an armful of branches back as he passes so they won’t whip Eddie when he comes through. “Grief is like that,” he sighs. “So is trauma. You have to turn your mind to the new reality, and it’s painful. Forgetting you’re not in the old one. Here.”

Ducking beneath the brambles, Eddie catches sight of the orange tent that Chris has hidden deep in the trees. For a moment, it _does_ look like his old reality. It calls him back to severe days in the wilderness, constantly endangered, and the overwhelming pleasure that staking a tent used to be.

Nights with Chris, an overwhelming pleasure. A scalding, desperate intimacy in which the terror of the day spoiled.

But as Eddie shakily walks towards the tent, there’s dread in his belly. He’s afraid that he will enter and this space will be different too.

“I wish you told me more about yourself,” Chris admits behind him, putting his hands on Eddie’s shoulders. “You gave me glimpses and they were never enough.”

Eddie dismisses him with a frown. “You don’t need to know where I come from, Chris. It doesn’t matter.” He turns, reaching for one of Chris’ hands. “You shouldn’t have saved me. I’ve done nothing but bring burden to you since.”

The smile is soft on Chris’ face. “It’s true,” he spars gently. “But it’s welcome.”

Shrugging off the reassurance, Eddie dips under Chris’ arm and slinks into the tent.

Chris sighs and looks around before going after him. This is hardly a camping spot- the surrounding trees are packed tightly together and the ground is leveled unevenly by flora and rocks. But it feels safe. He slips into the shelter, fumbles to turn on the lantern he left inside, and take comfort knowing the light will be choked out by the tree trunks and underbrush.

Eddie is lying on the floor. He looks up as the dim light hits Chris’ face, all vulnerabilities etched on him. His eyelids appear bruised, his eyes themselves even darker. If not for his wilted posture, Chris would almost feel relieved that Eddie discarded his knife somewhere in the forest.

He has a couple sleeping bags rolled out on the floor, along with a first aid kit and a bag filled with other survival tools.

“I’ve done a lot of things that I regret,” Chris offers, sitting down and putting the lantern between them. “The only way to survive it is to shut it off. Send it to the back.”

Saying this immediately becomes another thing that he regrets. Because Eddie can’t do that the normal way, he realizes. Something similar but much more dangerous happens. He either is forced to chew on it and manually break it down, or he shuts off and becomes something else. And right now, Eddie’s jaw is splintering from all the chewing.

He shakes his head. “No, fuck that,” he backpedals, meeting Eddie’s eyes with the intensity he reaches in battle. “I’m sorry, don’t do that. Like I said before, let me take the weight for you.”

Highest on his list of regrets right now was not giving Eddie the order to shoot.

As he turns around to pop open the first aid kit and rummage for Temazepam, Eddie peels himself off the ground. He skulks over to Chris, sliding his hands over the older’s shoulders. His eyes close as he presses his lips to the side of the blonde’s neck, curving his fingers possessively, just beneath Chris’ jaw.

The next time he opens his mouth, it’s to take the white capsule onto his tongue, swallowing it down.

Chris turns placing both hands on Eddie’s shoulders so he can guide him back onto the floor.

“You should go home,” he admits. “I can arrange that for you, if you want. You don’t have the stomach for violence. And that’s good,” he adds.

Eddie studies him, ripping every drop of sincerity from his expression until he’s sure the other is genuine.

Chris has _no idea_ about Eddie’s tolerance for violence.

“One day I won’t be able to keep him back,” he hisses, “And then it will _only_ be violence.”

“I don’t understand,” Chris murmurs softly.

“Victimized goes to victimizer really fast.” His expression is steady, trying to keep Chris attentive to every word. “Sometimes both at the same time. I’m still in a place where I prefer the former, but I know eventually I will lose my head and with it, that part of me.”

Chris doesn’t know why he cares. He doesn’t know why _that_ , of all things, pierces through the shell he built in order to protect him from horrors like this. Surely he’s been exposed to worse. But his exoskeletal barrier is made from his own organic material, and Eddie is jabbing right at the softest pieces of him.

“Please explain better,” he responds, a little to fast, in too much of a growl.

“I hear voices in my head, all of the time,” Eddie shoots back, words gnarled by his teeth. “Is that obvious enough for you? Anything else you need to know?”

Chris rubs his knuckles across his eyes, pressing them into his skull.

He doesn’t understand.

He grew up in an apartment with two families shoved inside of it- with older male cousins that laughingly swung baseball bats at his head and younger ones that clung to his legs and chest when they slept at night. He’d been through household overdoses and rapes, school fights and expulsions, parental arrests and gruesome pet deaths. None of it had really touched him.

Even here, with the death and the killing, he was able to file it under the “less serious” category in his mind.

So he doesn’t know why he is finally feeling something akin to dread. Why this matters, or why _everything_ seems to matter, for the first time he can remember.

So maybe it isn’t that hard to understand Eddie afterall. Whoever has been operating him all of these years, it hasn’t been Chris. He is also afraid, for all the opposite reasons, of what would happen if he wrested control back over his mind.

He runs his hands down to his neck, nervously scratching at the vulnerable flesh, still wet with Eddie’s saliva. “No,” he answers, batting a hand at Eddie’s face in a loving gesture. “No, I understand. I was just… thinking about my family.”

Thinking about how he’s always had to shut himself off in order to be the commander. Always taking care of everyone else; always capping his feelings off so they didn’t make trouble with his role.

He feels memories swelling up into his throat, some of them so shiny he must have not revisited them in a long time: walks to school with 10-year-old Liliana, hours after 3 with the math teacher, cooking chili with his aunt from packets bought in bulk. He wants to sit down and sort them out, share them, put them in timeline order. But then he sees Eddie looking desperately at them, and he forces himself to swallow them down.

Eddie inches forwards, running his hands down Chris’ front and bringing their mouths together.

The safety of the cabin and the comfort of the younger’s palms traveling down his front melt Chris’ mind, but the cold dread sits in his center and refuses to thaw.

He breaks away, grabbing both of Eddie’s wrists before they stray further down the waistband of his pants.

“Stop,” he breathes, manually placing both of Eddie’s arms over his shoulders, offering an intimacy stripped of sexual charge. It does feel like nothing has changed- the small tent, the middle of a forest, a seclusion in which they can pretend to be the only two humans in this strange country. Is this why he brought Eddie here? Or did he act on instinct again, refusing to parse through the consequences?

Eddie squeezes his eyes shut and places his palms flat against Chris’ chest. He hears the thrum of the older’s heart in his hand.

“Walker,” he voices carefully. “I need you to take over instead of him.”

Chris holds firm. “If we have sex, it’ll be exploitative and harmful. You’re a fucking mess right now. I’m supposed to take care of you.”

“I _need you_ to hurt me,” he insists. “I need you to make me the victim.”

Chris looks at him, cocking his head in angered confusion. “Stop it,” he barks, “And that’s an order.”

“Please,” Eddie rushes, voice breaking. “I need to stop thinking about it. I need something louder than it to get it out of my head. It’s going to destroy my mind.”

“It’s too weird,” Chris undertones, looking away. “It won’t help either of us.”

Eddie grabs Chris’ hand and puts it to his neck. “Fight me,” he demands lowly, jabbing a knuckle under Chris’ neck to get him to look back up. “You’re angry at me. You’re not afraid to fuck me to pieces.”

“I don’t play these games,” Chris snarls, bending forward until Eddie hits the ground. But already, he is molding to fit the role that has been asked of him. “Sit up with me and do this the right way.”

Pushing himself onto his knees, Eddie meets himself at Chris’ height.

Chris opens his mouth but the twist of concern in his face speaks for itself; Eddie forces in-between before the words reach the air. “Yes,” he bulldozes breathlessly, “It’s okay. This is what I want.” Already, he feels lighter. By the time Chris’ arms are around him, the promise of this howling distraction is enough to dull the grief and fear inflaming his mind.

And by the time Chris is pulling Eddie onto his lap and tugging his shirt over his head, all promises for Chris’ vulnerability have been shoved into back into the well of his brain. He will be in charge and he won’t let his feelings get in the way of it.

They kneel and peel off each other’s clothing, one article at a time. It’s affectionate and gentle, and even when they’re both naked, neither of them are aroused.

Chris grabs both of Eddie’s arms and forces him to turn around, pushing his chest to the tent floor. He doesn’t think he can do this, as he mounts Eddie and slides his cock against the younger, no sexual gratification coming from it.

Gritting his teeth, he withdraws, taking himself into his hand. “Prepare yourself,” he instructs Eddie as he fists his cock. He finally starts to get hard from the simple mechanics of it. But the sight of Eddie stretching himself open with a pair of licked fingers means nothing to him.

This is clinical and made with rough edges and it disgusts him.

This used to be something that happened before falling asleep; when they huddled close for warmth and ended up stroking each other to climax, or when their mouths wandered, exploring, until they were panting and desperate to fuck. It always felt honied, and warm, and safe.

And it makes him even angrier to know that that worked, but maybe it only in that situation.

Chris rises, grabbing for Gluskin.

The man’s face is flushed and overwhelmed, heated with lust. It means nothing to Chris.

He bends him over and thrusts into him, hard enough to set off a squeak from below. He hooks an elbow around the younger’s sternum, pulling him closer to force himself in harder this time. He thinks about the jacket that he left in the woods and wishes it were with him now. Eddie cries out louder.

With jagged movements, Chris fucks the other as demandingly as he can. He thrusts his hips against Eddie in the ways he knows will hurt, and doesn’t stop until he notices he’s slipped out, his penis limp and useless.

He leans back on his knees, turning Eddie to face him once more.

The black haired solider’s cheeks are streaming with tears. He opens his mouth to say something and Chris slaps him across the face.

Eddie recoils. Recovers. He looks back up at Chris with an express that Chris has never seen before on his face. Chris raises his other hand and smacks him even harder this time, sending him sprawling to the ground.

Eddie is sobbing now, curling into himself. He uses his hand to cushion his stinging face from the ground. “Thank you,” he hiccups, flashing his gaze up at Chris. His eye rolls and then closes, the sickly hot wave of the sedative washing through him. “Chris, thank you.”

Chris looks down for a moment, uncertain of what he is feeling. Then he gathers Gluskin into his arms, bringing him in close.

He wishes that there was somebody here to comfort _him_. But he didn’t sign up for that when he became the captain of this company.

Cautiously, he guides a violently drowsy Eddie back into his clothing, then rests him down on one of the sleeping bags. From there he lies down on his own side of the tent, but doesn’t sleep for a very long time.

-

When Eddie wakes up in the early morning, Chris is sitting across the room with his arms around his legs, wearing his military jacket. Eddie’s knife is lying by his pillow; the male runs a finger absently across it, blurry details of the previous day coming back to him.

“Chris,” he rasps quietly, his body alight with ache.

Chris looks up, wilted by weariness.

“I have to go back,” he says lowly, voice tucked underneath his breath. “Do you know how to get back to base on your own, or do you need to come with me?”

Shakily, Eddie rises to a crouch, his body weak. “Can we stay here?” he asks timidly, like a child. The sound churns in Chris’ chest, making him sick.

“That was not good for me, Eddie,” he manages brokenly, pulling himself to his feet. “And I have to go back.” He lifts the flap of the tent out of his way and ducks out of it.

The sunlight is a white-hot slash on his senses, bleaching out everything.

Eddie comes out of the tent after him, grabbing for his arm.

“Let go of me,” Chris bellows, jerking away from the other. Pain spreads across his face, burning everything with it. His voice quiets. “Let me go,” he begs.

Eddie’s claws release slowly.

The fabric of his military jacket keeps the marks from showing up on his skin.

-

Chris stands in the middle of the base, fashioning greeting salutes towards his men as they pass.

It’s been ten months since Gluskin was discharged. Chris didn’t see him go; there are no wounds on his body to mark that Eddie had ever been there at all.

And yet, when a sharp breeze slices through the camp, flooding the men with sand and grit and dust up to their chins, Chris sees the black hair of a man cut like a razor and he feels his heart squeeze for a moment.

And he did not know his heart could still do that.


End file.
